FG Palliatives: A Grain Of Rice For Each Household!

 By Tunde Olusunle

If you were a student of English in my generation, there were au­thors and titles, African and for­eign, you just had to encounter. Nigerian writers like Daniel Fagunwa, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Chris­topher Okigbo, John Pepper Bekeder­emo-Clark, Timothy Aluko, Gabriel Okara, Elechi Amadi, Ola Rotimi, Zulu Sofola, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, all members of the “first generation” of Nigerian writers; they were irrevo­cable constants.

On the African scene, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Brutus, Pe­ter Abrahams, Lenrie Peters, Alan Pa­ton, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Meja Mwangi, Simon Gikandi, Camara Laye, Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho, Ayi Kwei Armah, Sembene Ousmane, Frantz Fanon, Sonne Mbella Dipoko, Nagu­ib Mahfouz and so on were featured variously on our reading lists. Indeed, in several instances, we had prior ex­posure to the works of some of these icons in the syllabuses of our ordinary school leaving and higher school cer­tificate examinations respectively. In our multi-generic poetry, prose, drama, oral literature and stylistics classes in the university, these legends were fur­ther encountered in various ways.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o generally and deservedly adulated as East Africa’s leading novelist wrote the novel titled A Grain of Wheat, which was first pub­lished in 1967. It was his third outing as a novelist after its successful fore­runners, Weep Not, Child and The River Between, published in 1964 and 1965 respectively. A Grain of Wheat blends together several encounters during Kenya’s hard-fought pre-inde­pendence “state of emergency”, espe­cially between 1952 and 1959. Ngugi, by the way, was known and referred to as “James Ngugi” in his earlier career. His repudiation of the vestiges of co­lonialism which compelled Africans to bear foreign honorifics among oth­er Western impositions, necessitated his recourse to his traditional Kikuyu (Kenyan) name, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

He loaned the title of his third book from the book of St. John, chapter 12, verse 24, of the Holy Bible. That por­tion of the Bible reads thus: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I am adapting the title of Ngugi’s third work of prose in inter­rogating a very recent development in the continuing condescension, disre­gard, disrespect and sarcastic trium­phalism of the state against the peo­ple. In other climes, at other times, this manner of official sniggering, scoffing and sneering constitute the combusti­bles for mammoth scale conflagrations capable of unimaginable denouement.

Confronted with the reality of an angry, hungry, edgy and impatient populace fed up with official promises and platitudes, President Bola Tinubu, last week, announced palliatives to the generality of Nigerians. Mass anguish over the deregulation of fuel prices by over 200 per cent; inflationary trends soaring above 24 per cent; shrinking pockets, were collectively instigating popular anger. After the ill-thought pro­posal to pay N8000 each to 12 million Nigerians as cushioning for the remov­al of fuel subsidy, Tinubu has reversed himself with a new arrangement. His government now intends to reach the people through their various state gov­ernments. Five billion naira each will be made available to state governments to enable them to procure rice, maize and fertilisers for their people.

Fifty-two per cent of the funds, ac­cording to the federal government, are grants to the state governments, while 48 per cent are loans. Let’s hope our predator-governors fully understand what this infusion is meant for at this time. Let’s hope that the very poor and impoverished benefit from this gesture albeit its tokenism. It sounds grand in figures but is actually minuscule rela­tive to national thirst and hunger. Let’s hope some governors do not true-to-type, invite bureau de change opera­tors to their palatial abodes in Abuja to help convert the funds into foreign exchange for storage in their personal strong rooms. Let’s hope this infusion will not be committed to electioneering especially by states which have off-sea­son polls in the last quarter of this year.

A video clip which has been trend­ing on the social media for a few days now was recorded in Kwara State and details the manner of the appro­priation of the grains delivered to the state in one of the council wards. The medium of communication is Yoru­ba. Residents of a particular neigh­bourhood in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, can be seen in a semi-circle listening to a speaker who reports the sharing formula of the recently allo­cated grains from federal government silos. According to him, the state gov­ernment received a total of 1200 bags of rice from the federal government. This was shared between the 16 lo­cal government areas, (LGAs) in the state and further apportioned to all the council wards in the various LGAs. According to the narrator, Ilorin West Local Government Area has 12 council wards and “Adewole” ward, a section of which he was briefing, received eight bags of rice. Adewole ward, ac­cording to him, encompasses several contiguous communities and so the grains were further shared to cover the various neighbourhoods.

In the words of the narrator: “Our neighbourhood received six out of the 36 cups obtainable in the 50 kilogramme bag of rice shared by constituents of Adewole ward.” An instinctual assistant to the narrator spontaneously hoisted the eight kilo­gramme shrunken bag containing the share of that clan for the audience to behold. Spontaneous murmurs of dis­appointment and disenchantment ex­pectedly gave way to hisses and grunts. People could be heard proposing un­canny sharing formulas to ensure everyone in that unit of the council ward got a share of the “palliative.” A nursing mother with a baby strapped to her back cynically proffered that the food item be shared to the supposed beneficiaries in single grains since that was how lowly the federal gov­ernment regarded Nigerians.

In a country where the National Assembly just last month proposed to spend a whooping N40 Billion on Sports Utility Vehicles, (SUVs) for 469 parliamentarians, the quantum dis­respect for the masses is unthinkable. Aside this sum, additional funds will be appropriated for the procurement of bullet proof automobiles for the presiding officers of the bicameral parliament. An additional provision of N70 Billion has also been made for the legislators as their own “palliatives” to help them settle down properly to their official assignments. While the sum of N185 Billion has been set aside for 137 million very poor Nigerians therefore, less than 500 congressmen will have at least N110 Billion as booty!

Helpless Nigerians are eternally at the mercy of hoodlums in the guise of kidnappers, unknown gunmen and the like while Nigerians leaders are insulated from such deathly possibil­ities. Their leaders fly in state-owned aeroplanes or their personal jets. On land they are cocooned in bullet-proof vehicles sirens announcing their movements, clearing clogged routes for their passage. The same leaders have decimated the figures of securi­ty personnel who are supposed to pro­tect the rest of us. They have engaged such arms-bearing professionals as bodyguards and escorts for themselves and their families. There is security cover for them in the capitol even as de­tachments of our inadequate security numbers equally oversee their country homes. Didn’t we recently see a short video of Seyi Tinubu, who prides himself as the “First Son of Nigeria” the other day moving around, heavily guarded by state security?

With decrepit fiscal capacity, a dis­enchanted citizenry, a demotivated mil­itary which recently lost about 40 offi­cers and men in the course of internal security duties, what is the rationale for stoking external aggression against neighbouring Niger Republic? Being the chair of the Economic Community of West African States, (ECOWAS) at this point in time is not synonymous with misguided championing of mili­tary assault on a country which many Nigerians on the northern fringes of the country see as alternate home. Ni­geria has paid its dues in sub-regional peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gam­bia, among others, are countries where Nigeria has impacted either as part of a sub-regional force or participants in United Nations operations in West Africa.

Immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, (CDS), Lucky Irabor, as recently as May this year, noted that Nigeria had contributed to 41 peacekeeping operations worldwide which must be a global record. According to the retired army General, it cost Nigeria a staggering USD 8 Billion to restore peace in Liberia! N8 Billion honestly and conscientiously applied to the development of Nigeria at this time will be a socioeconomic game chang­er. Unanimously, Nigerians across the spectrum reject ill-conceived armed invasion of Niger Republic. They equally abhor the participation of the Nigerian military in any such project. Whatever supplementary appropria­tion Nigeria intends to conjure for its participation in a needless war should be channelled to making life better for Nigerians. There is genuine starvation in the land; there is palpable despon­dency; the economy is in the throes of possible recession; the hospitals are re­ceiving many more patients than they did in the past. Roads remain in utter disrepair; crime is on the ascendancy; cannibalism in the name of ritual kill­ings is on the rise. Let’s face our own internal challenges and guarantee our own people more than a preposterous grain of rice.

*Dr Olusunle, poet, journalist and author, is a member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors